


The New Tradition

by Thingsareswinging



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: AU, F/M, Inquisitor Cassandra - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-03 19:51:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8727958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thingsareswinging/pseuds/Thingsareswinging
Summary: Orion Lavellan, Herald Of Andraste (tm) took a wrong turn down the mountain. This proves to be a problem for literally everybody.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 

> "Is this some kind of hazing ritual or something."
> 
> -Orion Lavellan, on being informed that the shems think he has some kind of divine mandate.

* * *

 

Haven should have been a triumph. The pretender crushed, doubt expunged. For a time, he had allowed himself the audacity of hope. For a time, the dream had survived.

Disappointment was a shackle he had borne for millennia.

* * *

 

Haven had been hard-won.

The plan had been simple. So simple, now she considered it, now the fire had faded and the braying legions were no longer at her back, that in another place she might have accused her Teacher of hubris. Of fallibility.

Fiona was dead. The woman who had defied everything she had been taught, who had risked everything for freedom, had been hurled into the fray, and now she was dead, cut down by the pretender to her Teacher’s throne.

This worried Calpernia. This worried her _immensely_.

At least she could take some small comfort in the fact that the Herald was dead.

* * *

 

Haven had been a disaster, and one they should have all seen coming. Still, it would have been so much worse, if not for the Herald. His actions ensured that the Inquisition would outlast him, at least for a while.

The dear boy; Vivienne was going to miss him. He had been… dependable. Someone who would take action when action was needed. Which, she supposed, was why he had stayed behind.

He had chosen her to be part of his rearguard, of course, and they had gone out to meet these Venatori. And when the trebuchet had been primed and that wretched dragon descended he’d given the order to retreat and she and the Iron Bull had done so- it had been the only sensible course of action. The Herald was- _had been_ \- good at making sensible decisions.

Of course, little Sera had never been blessed with that kind of insight, which was presumably why she had stayed behind.

* * *

 

Lavellan had not returned.

This was _incredibly_ frustrating.

The arguing had died down, finally, in no small part due to the fact that Commander Cullen had developed a sore throat, and now the camp was in tatters, huddled groups of twos and threes, hunched around fires and avoiding each others’ eyes.

This was _absolutely_ not what he had planned.

Still. One had to make the best of things. With a sigh, he paced silently over to where the Seeker was sitting. In the absence of his first choice, she would have to do.

* * *

 

In the catacombs below Haven, something stirred. A ragged jumble of dingy grey rags pulled itself out of nothing, unfurling into a tattered maelstrom of impossibly narrow limbs and a jaw unfurling into a scream.

A scream which was cut abruptly short when an arrow spat out of the darkness and lodged itself directly in a demonic oesophagus. Three more followed, more for good measure than out of necessity.

The figure that emerged after them, as the demon turned to ashes, was a particularly sorry sight. Blood was matted into her short blonde hair, one eye had swelled almost shut, and she was bowed under the weight of a dark figure, slung across her shoulders.

As Sera stumbled towards what she desperately hoped was daylight, something occurred to her.

“How the _frig_ is it,” she forced out through chattering teeth, addressing the insensible lump on her back, “that you made yourself this great ruddy coat, but didn’t think to make me something with frigging _sleeves_?”

Orion Lavellan, Herald of Andraste, the de facto leader the Inquisition did not have, currently clinging to life by his fingernails, offered no insight into his sartorial rationale.

“After I’m done saving your arse,” Sera grumbled, as she scrambled out into the biting chill of the open air, “you owe me. You are getting me the _biggest_ hat. And a _scarf_.”

Picking a direction entirely at random, Sera, with a woodcraftiness honed by twenty-ish years of staying as far away from nature as she possibly could, shifted Orion more squarely across her shoulders, and blundered out into the storm.


	2. Chapter 2

“I want you to know, Inquisitor, you've got a hell of a job ahead of you.”

Oddly, it’s only the Iron Bull who hasn't stumbled over her new title. Between Vivienne’s effusive ‘ _ my dear _ ’s and Varric stubbornly clinging to  _ Seeker _ , Cassandra had almost been able to forget her sudden and decidedly unwelcome promotion.

“ _ Really,”  _ she snaps, because it takes real effort not to snap at everything, and she’s tired, before the real work has even begun. “Because I was under the impression it would be all so simple.”

There’s an infuriating twinkle in the Bull’s one eye, and he flashes a lopsided smirk. “Sarcasm’s good. But it’s not going to get you through this one.”

For a second she wants nothing more in the world than to grab him by the horns and drive a knee into his teeth. But she grabs her temper with a shudder, and holds onto it. This is made more difficult by the way he gives an approving nod, like he just noticed the deliberate way she didn't try to kill him.

“If you have a point,” she growls, “make it.”

“I've seen this before,” he explains, without rancour, sitting back further in his chair. “People who got so good at their job they got promoted out of it. You’re not a soldier any more, you’re a  _ manager  _ of soldiers. Some folks can't make that switch, end up cracking under the strain. You don't have that option.”

“I-”

“How long did you spend in the yard today? Because if it was more than an hour, it was too long. Delegate. You’ve got a fortress overflowing with people who are more than happy to go around hitting things on your behalf. And, speaking as one of them,” he grins, and rolls one gargantuan shoulder, a motion made more complicated by all the muscles that have to get out of the way first- “a lot of us are  _ really  _ good at it.”

“I-” Cassandra finds, to her horror, that he has a point. He has at least two, in fact. “I will consider what you have said.”

“Good!” He beams, and lounges back. “We’ve got your back, Inquisitor. Just point us in the right direction. And if you ever need to unwind a little, drop by anytime. I’ve got just the thing to help you let your hair down.”

His sudden grin, full of rough promises, is so shameless that Cassandra is, for a second,  _ almost _ convinced he’d been taking notes from Varric’s books. And the only way to deal with  _ that,  _ of course, is to pretend that she hadn’t noticed it at all.

 

* * *

 

“Come on,  _ light _ , you stupid frigging-”

“Sera,” he rumbles, low and bassy, a trick she’s always envied, how frigging intimidating would it be if she could talk that low, all sneaking up on pricks in some alley somewhere and booming all ‘ _ you daft cunts are in trouble now _ ’-

He’s shuffled up behind her while she wasn’t paying attention, and with a flick of his wrist the pile of kindling and branches she’d been fussing over explodes into sudden flame and she collapses backwards with a start.

Whirling, she turns on him, and punches him in the shoulder, light enough to not start a fight but hard enough to remind him to-

“ _ Warn me!” _ she snaps, because that’s a thing, right? Warning people before you make things explode in their face is basic politeness, right?

From the look on his face, Orion might have just worked this out himself.

“Sorry,” he rumbles. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Yeah, well,” she mutters- frigging low trick of him to hand her  _ vindication _ like that, he has to know she’s no idea how to deal with it- “you’d better.”

He nods like she hasn’t been talking complete shite, and squats down by the fire.

“Right,” she says, a bit too loud, “what’s the plan?”

And here’s the thing she’s starting to really appreciate about Orion: when she asks him, he doesn’t get all modest and pretend like she’s as good at planning as he is, or that it’s not his place to say. When she asks him for a plan, he sits down and comes up with a plan.

She can bring down a deer from a hundred yards so they don’t die of starvation halfway up a mountain, he can figure out which way to walk so they both don’t die of being halfway up a mountain. The world’d be pretty dull if everyone was made the same.

“We’ll head West, into Orlais,” he announces, after a minute or two of staring hard at the fire. “The Venatori came from the East, out of Redcliffe, and any further South and we’ll be intruding on Avvar lands.”

The air’s so thick with the thing he’s not saying she’s liable to choke on it, so:

“We’re not following the Inquisition, then? ‘Cause they went North, was what I heard.”

Orion flinches, actually ruddy  _ flinches _ , like he didn’t think she’d notice.

“If you want to go back, we can work that out once we’re back on paved roads,” he mutters, dodging the question, again, because Orion might be just about the dumbest smart person she’s ever met. “But you’re right. I’m not going back.”

“Okay.”

“The Inquisition,” he says, “is a human organisation. Following a church I have been taught my whole life to stay as far away from as possible. They called me a  _ Herald _ , a prophet of a god I don’t believe in and don’t want to, because an accident with a magical artefact left me with this,” he twiddles his fingers, and the mark crackles like fat bacon. “But the Breach is closed, now, and the Inquisition has this Corypheus to fight.”

“I mean, you could help them with that?”

Orion looks sidelong at her. “How, exactly, could I do that? Alongside some of the best fighters I have ever seen in my life?” He paused. “No, in fact, that comparison isn’t even  _ relevant _ . Back in my clan, our mightiest warrior was a hunter that had once brought down a bear on his own. You recall the dragon, in the forests near Redcliffe?”

“ _ Do _ I,” she sighs. That had been an  _ incredible _ day.

“Do you remember how it landed square on Blackwall’s chest? And then he got up again and kept fighting? That’s a talent I don’t think I have. I don’t even know how you find out you can  _ do _ that.”

She can’t help but giggle. “Maybe you start small, yeah?”

“What, so you think Blackwall let a nug chew at his ankles for a while, and worked his way up?” He snorts, and a bit of life eases back into his shoulders.

“Nah, you’re right, I reckon a bear fell on his head when he was a kid, yeah.”

“A moment of inspiration at a young age,” Orion chimes in, acting all over-scholarish, peering down the bridge of his nose, and she shoves him in the shoulder, still laughing. “But,” he sighs, righting himself, “we’re getting off track. My point is, if you want someone to examine some deer droppings and tell you how the hunt’s going to be, I’m absolutely your man. World-ending darkspawn demigods? Maybe go get the Inquisition instead.

“Heh, droppings,” she grins, but if she tries, she can see his point. But-

“But I do have this,” he says, brandishing his hand again. “So here’s what I’m going to do. The Breach is closed, but you can’t throw a rock without hitting a smaller rift. And I might possibly be the only person in Thedas that can close them. And if we’re all really lucky, Corypheus will notice, and spend enough time and effort chasing after me that the Inquisition catches up with him and makes him eat his own hands.”

“Y’know,” she says, mildly, “you’ve got a way of making things sound fun. Alright, I’m in.”

Funny thing is, she thinks he looks  _ relieved _ . Like he thought she might say ‘sounds bollocks, I’m off. Have fun in the snow.’


End file.
